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OPINION

The Greatest Threat to Mainstream Media

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
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AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File

The mainstream media is under attack.

Not from Donald Trump. Not from conservatives or Republicans. The truth is what threatens today’s mainstream media—and what little credibility to which it may cling—more than just about anything else. 

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In the last few weeks, numerous revelations have broken through the suffocating pressure of “consensus” narratives repeated ad nauseam by the mainstream media, showing that the truth cannot be kept down forever.

From the origins of the Wuhan coronavirus to the events surrounding last summer’s violence in American streets, the truth keeps overcoming the misinformation or outright lies of those who act as though they know better than the rest of us. 

When a trove of emails sent by Dr. Anthony Fauci was made public last week, it wasn’t just his credibility—whether he admits it or not—that took a hit. The media muppets who faithfully repeated and amplified all of his attempts to sideline questions about COVID’s origins were also proven to be little more than propagandists.

As we reported, Fauci knew the drug store masks we were forced to wear didn’t stop virus from passing through. He heard about possibilities that COVID came from a lab and circulated articles to his colleagues about gain of function research that might allow person-to-person transmission of a virus originally constrained to animal species. But that didn’t stop him from making the rounds in the media for months, telling us our masks would save us and COVID was a natural phenomenon. 

The resulting media coverage was an obsession with castigating those who didn’t wear masks, calling them grandma-killers, anti-science, and backwoods hicks. Media outlets launched attacks at anyone who questioned the origins of COVID along the same lines, adding claims of xenophobia and Asian hate to those who strayed from Fauci’s edicts. 

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When the truth came out about what Fauci knew, the media had to be silent. Their bias against reporting on Fauci’s true thoughts on the pandemic was a final act of obedience to his version of the facts. But worse than silence, many outlets doubled down on their conspiracy by going into damage control mode and covering for the man who’d led them astray. Even now, they continue to give Fauci airtime to defend himself and continue attacking those who turn his own emails against him. But it won’t save Fauci, and it won’t save his media compatriots. The damage is done, the truth is out, and serious people have moved on and resumed normal life.

On Wednesday, another media obsession was devastated by a revelation that came courtesy of a report from the Interior Department’s Inspector General. He stated that police did not clear agitators from Lafayette Park so President Trump could stage a photo op last June, as Democrats and their media allies told us had happened at the time. 

“Protesters Dispersed With Tear Gas So Trump Could Pose at Church,” declared The New York Times. 

“He’s using the American military against the American people… for a photo,” tweeted then-candidate Joe Biden.

“They cleared peaceful protestors out of the way for a Trump photo-op,” stated a CNN fact-checker.

“Peaceful Protesters Tear-Gassed To Clear Way For Trump Church Photo-Op” claimed taxpayer-funded NPR.

These outlets and individuals didn’t know the truth, but they stated their claims as fact and led millions to a conclusion many of us knew at the time was false. Now, the truth is definitive and the media narrative has been debunked. Many of the outlets who reported or repeated the false claims in June of 2020 subsequently wrote about this Wednesday’s IG report as though they hadn’t stated the opposite a little more than one year ago. 

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While the media acts oblivious to its mistakes and turns a blind eye to reporting missteps, the truth doesn’t waver and almost always, eventually, comes out. And people take note. It’s not a coincidence CNN and other mainstream outlets that put partisan conclusions ahead of finding the truth now see cratering ratings.

For conservatives—or anyone who favors evidence-based conclusions and waiting for the facts before making a conclusion—recent victories for truth should be a welcome sign that the seemingly unbeatable Democrat-Media complex isn’t actually the all-powerful entity it often pretends to be. 

For those on the losing side of these battles with the truth, it should be a warning bell. Their attempts to manipulate public opinion may yield temporary success, but the egg-on-face embarrassment that sends a growing number of readers, viewers, and listeners looking for better sources of information is always around the corner.

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